16 February 2024

A lot of folks are talking about OpenAI's Sora. Here are some of the videos made with it (although some suspect that at least one of the videos is not made with Sora). This old ronin gets the same vibe as when he saw the Commodore Amiga. What amazing graphics that had. We all wanted one. And it turned out that although we had those capabilities in the consumer sphere, it didn't replace artists and other creatives from dazzling us. It takes more than just the tools. There has to be something more. The low-hanging fruit is coming out now. When we get tired of that, we'll see some great stuff.

––– 凄い –––

Nike is laying off 2% of its workforce. Now Cisco Systems is laying off 5% in the Bay Area. Signs of a still-unhealthy economy, no matter what the stock market says.

––– 良くない –––

Here's a report in the Oregonian about a struggling downtown business. Too much theft. Barely enough profit margin to pay employees. Nearly none for the business owner. But this statement caught my eye: "Ly no longer bothers reporting shoplifting." Yeah, going through with prosecution is no longer worth it. Crime goes unpunished. And have you seen this video?

Yeah, the new normal in Portland is slower job growth.
––– 良くない –––

Democrats vote down policies that Republicans propose to help children's education. HB 4095 re-establishes basic proficiency standards for reading, writing, and math. HB 4161 effectively removes the cap on students who can enroll in a virtual charter school without their resident school district’s approval. And HJR 203 proposes an amendment to the Oregon Constitution to establish the fundamental right of parents to direct the education, upbringing, and care of their children. Democrats want kids locked into the public school system, where the teachers can expose them to critical race theory and gender deviancy studies.  And to give the Teachers' Union a reason to exist.

––– 良くない –––

Great news!  Over 2 Billion Metric Tons of Rare Earth Minerals Discovered in Wyoming. This looks to make the United States the leader in rare earth metal production, so we won't be dependent on countries that hate us.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon Senate votes to end Daylight Saving Time. There'll be a lot more hurdles to jump before it actually happens, however. But it's a start.

––– 凄い –––

15 February 2024

It's starting. The UK has fallen into recession. Japan has fallen into recession. Germany barely avoided it. Things aren't looking good.

––– 良くない –––

Wow. There's a drug that prevents amputation from frostbite not – iloprost.

––– 凄い –––

Removing the bottleneck. Oregon lawmakers are considering removing the need for a Certificate of Need, which should allow for more healthcare facilities. Not surprising that the law was put in place to prevent new healthcare facilities from attracting those with good insurance, leaving the socialist Medicare and Medicaid patients to other hospitals. Once again, fallout from lefty policies beget bad law, which begets other bad outcomes. Also, Oregon will pay for more "public guardians" to take care of those in need of nursing care, because they can't find regular staffing at nursing homes and assisted living homes. Stopgaps.

––– 良くない –––

Portland passed a law, where you can get fined if there is graffiti on your private property. They created the problem. But you'd better clean up the consequences.

––– 良くない –––

iPhone 16 is rumored to have an upgraded Neural Engine, and will have some generative AI features. Maybe this will include an autoregressor to unblur your photos.

––– 凄い –––

It's come to this. The future of precision cancer therapy might be to try everything. I thought this was a bad thing. So, it's apparently frowned upon to "try everything" serially, but it's OK when you do it all at once.

––– 凄い –––

Looks like the mainstream journals are just like mainstream media. Now journals like Nature and New England Journal of Medicine are telling you how to vote. Stay in your lane, folks.

––– 良くない –––

Written by a supporter of M110. And she uses the term "LatinX" which is a clue. She went on the Soros-funded Portugal boondoggle, so she's doing her bit to justify the trip expenses. No, Mercedes, M110 isn't working, and needs to be scrapped.

––– 良くない –––

Danny Jacobs take noteDiversity training increases feelings of bigotry. Makes sense.

––– 良くない –––

Obituary spam – yet another thing brought to you by artificial intelligence. 

––– 良くない –––

Don’t believe the citation count on Google Scholarit's manipulatable.

––– 良くない –––

It's 2024 and we still don't have an easy way to copy files between devices. At this time, you can't beat the trust USB drive. If it's a link, I just use Firefox Sync in a special folder I create. If it's a file, I use Sync or email.

––– 凄い –––

14 February 2024

Teachers are sending more kids to psychiatrists. Not sure if they really need it, or if they're doing this to cover their butts. In any event, this was not a problem when I was growing up. Of course, that world no longer exists.

––– 良くない –––

Generative AI Turns Ordinary Computers into Weapons of Mass Copyright Violation. And the problem is too big now, for any law to prevent. It'll just happen, and when it's out there, who cares? Bad time to be a creative. Your unique work, that you worked so long to perfect – it'll just be trained on and commoditized. With tools like img2dataset, your unique art style will just be an option in someone's dropdown menu.

OpenAI is giving ChatGPT memory, so it will remember stuff from session to session. Could be interesting. Could be scary. But then, you could delete the memory you don't want, but it's not clear how well that works.

And A.I. Girlfriends are a privacy nightmare. A data-harvesting horror. But who uses a hosted girlfriend. If you're that stupid, you don't deserve privacy. It may not quite be free, but you're still the customer.

––– 良くない –––

Fat finger strikes again. Lyft stock swings up and then down, due to a typo.

––– 凄い –––

Evil. Tech companies are firing people, then reposting the position at a lower wage to save money. I guess this is revenge, or the reverse of the time when techies would job-hop up the payscale ladder. Now the shoe is on the other foot. It sucks when you are no longer considered hot property.

––– 良くない –––

Apparently when you have Parkinson's DIsease, you have a certain smell. That's a clue right there.

––– 凄い –––

Citrix Workspace might be sending your clipboard over the network. It could be going to your employer, who knows? I bet hardly anyone is going to see this. Bad news if they're really doing this. 

––– 良くない –––

China is in trouble. The streets of formerly busy places like Shenzhen look like East Portland, now. But don't worry, the Chinese seeking a better life, are entering our southern border

––– 良くない –––

Now even Nature recognizes that the world has a Bill Gates problem. Bill's crazy ideas get funded and the world suffers. Look what happened to Common Core Math? A whole generation of math-stupid kids resulted from that. Now it's the vaccine effort, all to enrich himself further.

––– 良くない –––

Score is a dating service only for those with good credit scores. I suppose it helps weed out some of the losers, but I'm betting that people will figure out how to game the system eventually.

––– 良くない –––

Slavery is back! Thanks to the Biden Administration, it's OK to own black slaves again. Then they will want reparations. And social services. Remember this guy, fearing that Trump was going to bring back black slavery again? Heck no! It's Biden that's doing that.

––– 良くない –––

California: Home of politicians with stupid ideas. First they banned plastic straws, then plastic bags. Then they allowed thicker plastic bags. Guess what happened?  Then Rep Barbara Lee thinks $50 /hr minimum wage is a good idea. Because burger flippers just ought to make enough money to support a family of four. Legislate wealth. Legislate clean energy.
Update: Heh, looks like the stupidiy spread to New Jersey, too. Did they go to the same conference?

––– 良くない –––

The Biden Administration wants to uglify Oregon with offshore windmills. I hope this dies, but it probably won't. Ultimately it will be a climate tragedy and will spoil the natural attraction of the Oregon Coast.
––– 良くない –––

Everytime Dems see money, they think it belongs to them. Oregon Dem Rep Greg Evans wants kicker refund money to use for more spending. He thinks we need for important stuff, but didn't think such stuff was worthy of putting into the actual budget. But now it's supposed to be important.

––– 良くない –––

And now, the United States may lose control of the First Island Chain. It may be a good thing that the Chinese are hurting economically such that war with Taiwan is not guaranteed to be affordable, else we'd be in a world of hurt right now. That might be the main thing saving us now. Even Japan is willing to pay for the United States to continue, which shows how important it is, but the problem is that the United States may not have the armed forces personnel to staff this defense.

––– 良くない –––

13 February 2024

Even though the city is full of vacant office space, Portland can't find space for the 12 extra city council members that were voted in. The reason? They think their offices should have internet fiber, for the fastest connections. They're not doing internet-intensive work, like medical centers do with electronic health records. They're not providing cloud services to edge computing devices. They're just doing routine government work. Why is it necessary to rip up the streets to install fiber to the offices. This is why Portland is dysfunctional, and why they need all that tax money.

And Oregon needs more tax money, too. To fix problems they created.
––– 良くない –––

NVIDIA is more valuable than Google and Amazon. Incredible. Just came outa nowhere.
––– 凄い –––

Cats want to kill us. They carry bubonic plague. And Alaskapox.

––– 良くない –––

California's wealthy are leaving the state because of high taxes. Gee, who saw that coming. Bet the state is going to impose new creative taxes. Look for tolls, levies, fees.

––– 良くない –––

Caesars will no longer host DEF-CON. Caesar's got tired of getting hacked and losing money. What were those hackers thinking, anyway? Now, nobody will want to host them.

––– 良くない –––

Sad. Hong Kong is no longer the vibrant city it once was. It took communist China 26 years to bring the great city to its knees. And Hong Kong stocks are back to what they were in 1997, at the time of the takeover.
And the Chinese aren't reproducing as much as before. The efforts to reduce fertility linger, even though the campaign has stopped. Right now, China is #2 in terms of population, but if current trends continue, it will get overtaken by Nigeria by the end of the century.

––– 良くない –––

Funny. The gays and lesbians had a Mastodon instance called "queer.af".  But that domain comes out of Afghanistan, and the Taliban threw that domain name off the rooftop, I guess.

––– 凄い –––

Maybe, maybe, maybe.  45% of men are going to use A.I. to help compose something nice on Valentine's Day

––– 凄い –––

Inflation was higher than expected, according to today's report, leading to the stock market crashing. With all of Biden's giveways and free stuff, how could inflation not be higher. Student loans being forgiven. Free stuff for all the migrants entering the country. All this amounts to cash dumps into society, like quantitative easing. Money flowing into business and banks, when the economic production hasn't really changed. Gas prices are predicted to increase above $4/gal again, and when gas prices increase, the price of everything increases, because it affect shipping and deliveries, too.

––– 良くない –––

Oh, and global warming is a hoax.
––– 凄い –––


12 February 2024

Senators ask CEOs why their drugs cost so much more in the U.S.  The answer is simple – it's what the market will bear. Lowering the price of a drug is leaving money on the table. And CEOs have to act in the best interest of their shareholders.

––– 良くない –––

So mifepristone may not be that dangerous, after all. The main paper that scared the FDA about mifepristone has been retracted. So then they should allow it, with misoprostol.

––– 凄い –––

Emergency rooms are mess. It seems to have started right around the time the COVID-19 vax products were released. Hospitals started to go on divert status so often, because everyone was turning COVID-positive and demanded to be seen. Then they instituted COVID protocols, and everyone had to get vaxxed or quit. So many DID quit. Then the remaining staff were so stressed that many of them left anyway. And hospitals shut down elective procedures and lost money. And they spent money on expensive traveling nurses and lost money. Then the nurses went on strike, and they had boost pay. Then as people got poorer and had to go on Medicaid, hospitals saw loss reimbursement and decreased revenue. And nursing homes lost staff, so that they couldn't accept patients from hospitals as much as before, so hospitals were stuck with patients they couldn't release, and so the EDs couldn't admit as much, and so the EDs became jammed. And hospital EDs became such dismal overcrowded places to go, that people started avoiding them as much as possible, and so money was lost as well. It was a slow process for unnecessarily harsh COVID protocols to be relaxed in the Blue states, which suffered the most.

The solution I would offer: Open up a supplementary ED somewhere and sent all the drug overdoses there. No need to make the rest of the city suffer from the policies of Oregon legislature. Set up a secondary ambulance system just for the drug overdoses, too. Incentivize nursing homes to start taking in those needing their services.

Here's another solution – micro-hospitals. Pennsylvania is doing it. Build it, and send the overdose cases there. Don't let the rest of Portland suffer.

––– 凄い –––

The Chinese are creating publication farms, as only they can, do juice up the rankings of their mathematicians. Seems like everything that was once nice and reputable is no more. Take newspapers, for example. They used to be essential to stay abreast of what was going on. Then they became editorial centers, spewing out opinionated narratives. CNN used to be great, for example, Yeah, enshittification is coming to everythingLet the news media die.

––– 良くない –––

Good idea. Midjourney is going to ban political images for 2024. But people will just use DALL-E, or roll their own.

––– 凄い –––

Does Brilliant Labs have the best A.R. glasses?

––– 凄い –––

5 Famous Solopreneurs Who Had Accomplished Nothing By Age 40.  Never too late to try something.

––– 凄い –––

Magic mushroom seizures are up in Oregon. Oregonians never miss a chance to f*ck their brains up. The United States in general has so many with mental illness.
––– 良くない –––

Oregon business have finally realized that the state's tax policy is going to hurt them.

––– 良くない –––

The Internet used to be fun. Why you should start your own blog. Like this ronin.

––– 良くない –––

Whoa. It's been a while since I set foot in Burien. Man, has it changed. It's become Homeless Central.
––– 凄い –––

11 February 2024

That $426 million – we don't know what happened to it.  Nearly half a billion emergency rental assistance money – unaccounted for. Oregon Housing and Community Services doesn't know where that money went. They think it went to the right place. They hope so. But there are no records, so who knows? Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade still thinks they did a good job.

––– 良くない –––

2023's Billionnaires – how they fared. Lots of Chinese in the losers column. That shows you how brutal 2023 was.

––– 良くない –––

Seiji Ozawa has passed away. Now, there's only Kent Nagano, and you hardly hear of him these days.

––– 良くない –––

Oregon's Truffle Festival is coming up. They'll even train your dog to hunt. Would love to go, but man, those prices.

––– 凄い –––

There's a new opioid that's 25 times more potent than fentanyl, and it's already on the streets in Quebec City. It's called protonitazepyne. Just what Portland needs. The withdrawal from these drugs won't be pretty to watch.

––– 良くない –––

The American College of Pediatricians finally admits that there is no science behind gender-mutilating surgery for children. Too bad, Rachel Levine. Don't try to convince others to follow your path. Your choice was yours. Leave other people's children alone.

––– 凄い –––

10 February 2024

Happy Lunar New Year!

––– 凄い –––

Harvard and 69 other schools will re-institute COVID vaccine mandates. Elon Musk needs to hurry on building his science and tech university.

––– 良くない –––

Washington backed down on increasing caps on property tax. This time voters met a tax hike they didn't like, probably because it would hit them, too.

––– 良くない –––

A friar with little tech background is advising the Vatican and the Italian government on artificial intelligence. It's not what you know, but who you know.

––– 凄い –––

Getting harder to do. How to avoid making other people angry on the internet.

––– 凄い –––

I was wondering about this the other day. Who were the people that traversed from Asia across the Bering Strait to North America? The so-called Beringians?

––– 凄い –––

Yikes. The billionaire who wants to live almost forever now has LongCOVID. Who knows if his bizarre self-treatments are really helping. No mention of whether he got the vax product. This reminds me of Nathan Pritikin, who strived to live a long life, only to succumb to complications of having leukemia. Or Ray Walford, another longevity enthusiast, who died of ALS complications.

––– 良くない –––

This encapsulates Portland voters completely!
––– 良くない –––


9 February 2024

Today is the first anniversary of when I started this blog. Happy Anniversary!

––– 凄い –––

The new moon phase starts at 2:59 pm PST today, but Chinese New Years Day is tomorrow. Anyone know why that is?

––– 凄い –––

Even two Portland City commissioners understand that Portlanders have had enough with new taxes. Good grief, already. Curb your spending.

––– 良くない –––

SB1583 will diminish the right of parents and the school board to stop the crap that they want to put into the schools. This is why parents are putting their kids into private schools.

––– 良くない –––

Poll finds Portlanders pessimistic about Portland. Homeless, lack of safety and high taxes were among the top concerns.

––– 良くない –––

Physics for Mathematicians.

––– 凄い –––

Boeing workers confirms what we already suspected. If you are worried, you can use apps like Flight View to check what plane you will be flying when you book your flight.

––– 良くない –––

Hawaii Judge strikes again.  Hawaii court says 'spirit of Aloha' supersedes Constitution, Second Amendment.

––– 良くない –––

Looks like Legacy has more balls than Providence. If Regence doesn't accept Legacy's offer, then Legacy will drop Regence. Legacy would probably like to throw more support to PacificSource anyway.

––– 良くない –––

8 February 2024

Seattle broke a record in 2023 for fentanyl overdose deaths. Probably better get more diversity, Seattle.

––– 良くない –––

I don't get it. We were told that Multnomah County had a surplus of funds to pay for the preschool program. Even when the wealthy folks "forgot" to pay their share. So now, they can't fund the preschools without another 0.8% tax? What gives?

––– 良くない –––

As Warren Buffet said, "For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
They're inefficient, ugly and take up a lot of valuable space. The only winners are the windmill owners, getting that valuable tax credit.

––– 良くない –––

Biden Hits Worst Approval Rating. Yup, still 37%. These reports are a joke. Wake me up when it's below 30%.

––– 良くない –––

Portland’s only earthquake preparedness employee on budget chopping block. The only person Portland has on staff to make sure that when disaster hits, there is an organized response, has retired. Now due to budget cuts, they're thinking of eliminating that position. Obviously to give free monetary stipend to the homeless. And free preschool. And teachers unions.

––– 良くない –––

Portland's tax base is shrinking, but their expenses aren't. In fact they're growing. So they need to increase taxes on the poor slobs that are still stuck in the city.
And then Kotek called for the three-year tax moratorium in December, throwing the district’s plans into chaos.
Of course. What do you do when you're a failing city, and everything is more expensive to fix now, because you ignored it when it was cheaper to solve. Many are leaving, because the leadership is crap and ranked-choice voting makes sure that problem will never be solved.

––– 良くない –––

Rachel Levine under fire after HHS offers single study to back claims that child sex changes are 'necessary' healthcare.

––– 良くない –––

A search engine in 80 lines of Python. Wow!

––– 凄い –––

Watch out when you go through Seattle. The I-90 rock thrower is back again. Ready to dispense more life-altering injuries again.

––– 良くない –––

The small intestine has five distinct parts. In medicine, the small intestine is usually divided into three parts, the duodenum, jejunum and ileum, but this group has found five distinct parts, both in terms of function (what gets absorbed in each segment) but also distinctions in stem cell derivation. It's amazing that we're still discovering things about the body.

––– 凄い –––

Tritium-based fusion breakthrough. Five seconds of fusion action, resulting in a ground-breaking record of 69 megajoules using a mere 0.2 milligrams of fuel. Great!

––– 凄い –––


7 February 2024

COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign. I missed this when it came out a few weeks ago. It contains this statement, which is amazing to be seen in an American medical journal, instead of in some foreign journal, or as a Letter to the Editor in the BMJ:
Given the extensive, well-documented SAEs and unacceptably high harm-to-reward ratio, we urge governments to endorse a global moratorium on the modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are answered.
And this Korean doctor gets it right.
––– 凄い –––

Five sneaky things the Oregon Legislature always does. But Congress does this, too, not just Oregon.

––– 良くない –––

Tina Kotek is unhappy with the PSU report that homelessness in Oregon has increased. But then the Legislature proposes this: free pizza and fries for the homeless.

––– 良くない –––

Ed Diehl looks good on paper. But will he deliver?

––– 凄い –––

How dare they run a preschool downtown right in front of Portland's favorite drug abuse site? How thoughtless of you, Portland.

––– 良くない –––

Is this Satoshi Nakamoto?

––– 凄い –––

The East Coast's Kate Brown (Gov Hochul) wants to fast-track migrants for government jobs: 'Get this moving quickly', she says. Meanwhile, this is what the criminals are now doing. They area stealing phones, using it to empty their bank accounts, then selling the electronics to Europe for scrap. Are they just looking for a better life?
––– 良くない –––

The A.I. Math Olympiad has some serious brainpower on their advisory board.

––– 凄い –––

Could excessive dietary folate be the cause of the increase in colon cancer? Wow, folate is regarding as generally safe, and many doctors are not afraid to prescribe more than is probably necessary to pregnant women and those with anemia caused by hemolysis. But apparently excess folate promotes gene methylation, which is important in suppressing gene expression. And when an important gene like MLH1 is suppressed, you get cancer.

––– 良くない –––

Feeling stressed? Here are two ways to get quickly get back in control. One requires the Internet, one doesn't

––– 凄い –––

Now Regence Blue Cross is wrangling with Legacy Health. The terms of how it settled with Providence were not disclosed to the public, but I bet Providence hospitals patients will know about it soon. I'm beginning to think that the problem is with Regence, and perhaps Providence hospitals and Legacy Health should have negotiated with Regence together, instead of separately.

––– 良くない –––